Avoid Baby Talk: Essential English Vocabulary for Adult Learners

[00:00:00]Hewo.

[00:00:02]My name's Wonnie.

[00:00:04]What's your name?

[00:00:07]What?

[00:00:08]My name's Ro-... What are you?

[00:00:11]My name's Ronnie.

[00:00:12]What's going on?

[00:00:14]I'm going to teach you something today that is very, very important, especially for the ladies.

[00:00:22]Sometimes I know you try and be very cute.

[00:00:30]Cool.

[00:00:32]But there comes a point where you have to stop trying to be cute and actually act like a proper woman, whatever that means.

[00:00:41]It's up to your interpretation.

[00:00:42]So I'm going to teach you about what's called "Baby Talk".

[00:00:47]So, baby talk is what I was just doing to you in the camera.

[00:00:55]It has to do with your facial expression-your eyes are bigger, you're smiley-and your intonation, as well as the vocabulary you lose... Use.

[00:01:06]So, when it is very, very good and fun and acceptable to use baby talk is if you are talking to a baby, yes.

[00:01:17]Children, not so much.

[00:01:20]There comes a point where your precious baby will become a child, and you need to actually start to speak to them like a normal person.

[00:01:30]Not like a dragon, but like a normal person.

[00:01:33]They grow out of baby talk.

[00:01:35]Also-I do this-we talk to our pets like they're babies.

[00:01:41]Oh, doggy want a boney?

[00:01:43]Hello, kitty-cat, what's going on?

[00:01:46]And the cat's like: "Ah, this is great."

[00:01:48]Dogs and cats probably think we're a little crazy, too, and they're like: "What?

[00:01:53]No, but I'm cute though."

[00:01:54]Cool.

[00:01:55]"Give me the bone. Yeah, I'm cute. Give me the bone."

[00:01:58]So, if you're talking to a baby or a young child, or a pet - cool.

[00:02:06]Also, if you're talking to your partner, not in class, but your partner, so your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your husband, your wife, your other boyfriend, okay - you will-I do-use baby talk.

[00:02:19]This makes us seem cute.

[00:02:22]Awesome.

[00:02:23]But we don't want to seem cute at a job interview.

[00:02:27]We don't want to go: "Hi. I'm Ronnie-wonnie. How are you today? He-he-he."

[00:02:32]You're not going to get the job, and people might think you're a little strange.

[00:02:38]So baby talk is good for three people, three situations.

[00:02:45]Other than that, don't use it.

[00:02:48]You probably know some words that are baby talk or the intonation, but maybe there are some words that will surprise you.

[00:02:55]The number one are... One and two or the top ones are "mommy" and "daddy".

[00:03:02]So, I hear a lot of grown men say: "My mommy works in the mall."

[00:03:11]And girls say: "My... My daddy gave me a horse."

[00:03:17]Okay, maybe your daddy did give you a horse, but please, ladies and gentlemen who are adults: "mommy" and "daddy" are children's words.

[00:03:26]If a grown man says: "I love my mommy", we're going to think some strange things are happening with you and your mommy.

[00:03:36]As well, ladies, if you say: "My daddy is coming to see me tomorrow night", we're getting the wrong idea of what you're doing with your parents.

[00:03:46]So: "mommy" and "daddy" are only for children.

[00:03:50]What you're going to say is... Do you know?

[00:03:53]"Mom, mom, dad", good.

[00:03:56]We shorten this to: "mom".

[00:04:00]If you're learning English in the UK, they spell it: "mum", but they spell it with a "u".

[00:04:08]And "dad"... Sorry. "Daddy" becomes "dad".

[00:04:12]This is casually how we talk about our mom and dad.

[00:04:17]More formal... Again, this is baby talk.

[00:04:21]More formal we can say: "mother" and "father".

[00:04:26]So, it doesn't really matter which one you use, "dad" or "father", "mom" or "mother", just please don't say "mommy" and "daddy".

[00:04:40]It makes you sound like you're a little princess or that you have a very strange relationship with your mother and father.

[00:04:50]Yeah, not too good.

[00:04:51]So, "father" is formal and so is "mother".

[00:05:00]All right. When I first started the video, I said: "My name is Wonnie."

[00:05:05]Well, that's not my name.

[00:05:06]My name's Ronnie, but children have a hard time pronunci-... [Laughs] Pronunciating, like me.

[00:05:12]They have a hard time saying certain letters.

[00:05:15]For example, "r".

[00:05:17]Do you have a hard time saying "r" as well?

[00:05:20]Cool. See? You're learning.

[00:05:22]"R" is very difficult for babies to say, so don't feel bad.

[00:05:26]They're learning how to get the "r" out.

[00:05:29]So, instead of saying "r", they're going to say "w".

[00:05:33]So, you will hear in TV shows, when people say: "Aw, you're just a widdle boy".

[00:05:41]"Widdle" is a replacement for "l" in this case or "little".

[00:05:48]So, we would say: "little", but they say: "widdle".

[00:05:53]"Oh, just a widdle boy."

[00:05:55]If you can't say the "r", it might sound like: "riddle", but you say: "widdle".

[00:06:00]I used to do this, when I was a child I could not say "r", so I said "d", I said: "budder".

[00:06:09]I called my brother: "my budder".

[00:06:12]Now, "butter" in the pronunciation that you have here sounds like the delicious spread you put on toast and vegetables.

[00:06:22]So I would say: "Where's my butter?"

[00:06:28]Butter is delicious, so maybe I just really wanted butter, my parents got confused.

[00:06:35]Probably that's what happened.

[00:06:37]So, you'll also notice that in English pronunciation, in American and Canadian pronunciation at least, if it's a "t" sound we usually sound it like a "d".

[00:06:48]So, in Canada and America we don't say: "butter", we say: "budder".

[00:06:53]And we don't say: "little", we say: "liddle".

[00:06:58]That'll be another lesson, though.

[00:06:59]We'll get back to that.

[00:07:00]So, how do we make baby talk?

[00:07:05]How do we make baby words?

[00:07:07]We have two ways to do it.

[00:07:10]One of them is we double the sounds.

[00:07:14]So: "poo" is... Oh, I'm very good at drawing poo.

[00:07:21]Maybe you say: "number two".

[00:07:24]You can call it also "shit" in slang.

[00:07:27]So, as an adult if you wanted to, you could say: "shit", some people get mad at that word.

[00:07:33]You can say: "number two", or you can say: "poo".

[00:07:38]But for children, we double it, we say: "poo-poo".

[00:07:42]So you will hear maybe parents saying to the baby: "Do you have to go poo-poo?

[00:07:48]Do you have to...?

[00:07:49]Did you make a poo-poo in your...?"

[00:07:51]The baby's probably like: "I just shat myself, mom.

[00:07:54]Can you change my diapers, please?"

[00:07:56]Also we have: "pee-pee".

[00:07:58]Okay? Pee-pee is urine.

[00:08:02]So you can say: "Oh, excuse me. I have to pee."

[00:08:06]Very slang.

[00:08:07]"I have to use the toilet."

[00:08:09]Or we say "number one".

[00:08:12]So to make this an adult word, we just take off the second word.

[00:08:16]One of my favourites, always makes me giggle is "bum-bum".

[00:08:21]I think when I was a kid my mom said "bum-bum" a lot.

[00:08:24]I know she said "bumbaleerie", which is even too funny for me to say.

[00:08:28]"Bum-bum" is the ass.

[00:08:32]It's your ass.

[00:08:33]It's... I don't even know another polite way to say it.

[00:08:36]You can say: "bum", but for children we say: "bum-bum" and it's funny.

[00:08:42]In slang, we say: "ass".

[00:08:44]So you can say to someone: "Hey.

[00:08:46]Nice bum-bum."

[00:08:47]And they're like: "Thank you." Okay?

[00:08:49]Don't be rude.

[00:08:50]Be cute.

[00:08:51]Then we have a boy part and we have the girl part.

[00:08:56]So we for some reason do not want to tell children that they have a penis.

[00:09:04]We call it a "wee-wee".

[00:09:07]Mm-hmm.

[00:09:08]So you might hear someone say... A little boy might say: "I went pee-pee with my wee-wee."

[00:09:14]And you're like: "That's cool, kid. Awesome."

[00:09:17]I just took a piss.

[00:09:19]And then the girl part, the vagina, of course we could not tell the children it's a vagina, some people might call a "woo-woo".

[00:09:28]Woohoo.

[00:09:29]Not too sure where the "woo" came in, but I've also seen things on the internet where they are called minis, like Minnie Mouse.

[00:09:40]Very strange things that I've seen on the internet about words... For the lesson.

[00:09:46]I was researching about the lesson about what words we use for children for vaginas, I promise, and I'm making a video about it.

[00:09:55]We also have this expression... We have expressions that we use.

[00:09:58]We say: "Oopsie daisy!

[00:10:01]Oopsie daisy!"

[00:10:02]So if you have a child and your child falls over or you drop something, and you don't want to say: "Shit", people will say: "Oopsie daisy."

[00:10:13]As we get older, we just say: "Shit" or "Oops".

[00:10:18]So, if you want to be not as slang as Ronnie is, you can just say: "Oops".

[00:10:24]"Oopsie daisy" is very childish.

[00:10:28]So when we talk about this, we don't want to seem like a child.

[00:10:32]We want to seem like mature adults.

[00:10:35]Seem like, yeah.

[00:10:36]Okay.

[00:10:37]"Jammies", oo, I like this word.

[00:10:40]Put on your jammy-jammies.

[00:10:42]Jammies are the baby or the childish word for PJs.

[00:10:48]Now, you might say: "I don't get it, Ronnie, what are PJs?"

[00:10:53]What do you think PJs, p-jammies, pajamas.

[00:10:57]Woohoo. So, the clothes that we wear at nighttime to go to bed, we call them... For children we call them jammies.

[00:11:06]In short form we call them "PJs" and the long word is "pajamas".

[00:11:13]When you jump into your beddy-bye with your jammies, you are going to beddy-bye.

[00:11:19]So, "beddy-bye" is your bed or it's bedtime.

[00:11:26]And the other way that we make words are we simply add a "y" to some existing words.

[00:11:35]So, you've got your jammies on, you're in your beddy-byes, and you need your blankey.

[00:11:42]"Blankey" is the child's word for blanket.

[00:11:47]You might see children with a blankey, and it's their security blanket, but they call it "blankey" or "baba" sometimes.

[00:11:56]Depends on the age of the child.

[00:12:00]Children really like animals, but they can't... I guess they just can't say "horse", so they say: "horsey" or "doggy".

[00:12:10]Now, we say this sometimes.

[00:12:12]We say: "kitty" or they say "kitty", and they say "ducky".

[00:12:16]So maybe you're... Someone you know has a rubber ducky-quack, quack-and there's a song about a duck.

[00:12:23]It's amazing.

[00:12:24]Can you quack?

[00:12:25]Can you quack like a duck?

[00:12:26]So, the way that we make the words cute is we add a "y" to them.

[00:12:31]We usually use it with animals, I don't know why.

[00:12:35]So, very important to understand that it's okay to use these childish words, but you have to know when to use them, talking to children, talking to dogs or animals.

[00:12:53]"Hey, look at the doggy."

[00:12:55]The dog's like: "That's a duck." Okay?

[00:12:57]And if you're speaking to your partner.

[00:13:01]It's cool.

[00:13:02]Please be careful, don't use them in job interviews, don't use them when you first meet people because you will seem very childish and that's not cool.

[00:13:12]Okay?

[00:13:13]Beddy-byes for Wonnie.

[00:13:14]Bye-bye.